28 Years Later - The Transfer Apocalypse

A bunch of zombies causing a plague of rage across the North East? Yep, it must be July 1997, “King Kenny”, and the worst transfer business of modern times

Ah yes, it's the football silly season, where the lack of actual football drives fanzine writers to ever more desperate lengths. Ever see an article where you know the topical title came first and the content a distant second? Well, you have now.

Still, we're suckers for a bit of nostalgia at TF Towers, especially when it offers a grim reminder of how things once were. After all, Hollywood's got nothing on NE1 when it comes to a bit of gruesome dystopia.

And so we're transported back to the long hot summer of 1997. To recap. King Kev has disappeared into the night to be replaced by, ahem, King Kenny. Following a mid-season slump, we’ve recovered to somehow steal second place on the final day from Arsenal and Liverpool, losing only two of our last 19 games. Shearer, Ferdinand, Beardsley, and Asprilla have combined for 66 goals, while Davide continues to beguile us on the wing. The now entirely mis-labelled Champions League beckons for the first time in our history.

Heady days. Which lasted precisely a month before Keegan's squad proceeded to be gutted.

First to go were two of Ozzie's bairns, local lads who might not have had the quality to play at the very highest level but who gave the team a Geordie soul. Robbie Elliot went to Bolton, while Clarkie agreed to a deal that later transpired to have been an elaborate trolling prank on the great unwashed. That Wembley t-shirt will never grow old.

That was £4.5m banked, a figure that was nudged up by another £450,000 when Beardsley followed Elliot to the Reebok. By the end of the summer we'd have brought in upwards of £13 million, but the damage caused was incalculable.

Davide le Dieu might have flattered to deceive at times with his end product, but he remains the single most talented footballer I've ever seen step onto the turf at St James’. I remember vividly watching him simply trap a high cross field pass right in front of me. He might have been wearing velvet gloves on his feet, the ball instantly and gently cushioned before being attracted to his instep as if magnetised. For someone brought up on Wayne Feraday, this was a thing.

When he went to Spurs that July for £2m, it was as sad as it was predictable. He was a swashbuckling cavalier playing for a manager who preferred his players in the puritanical roundhead mould. Needless to say, David Batty’s place was not under threat. Two years later, Ginola would win a trophy and do the double of Football Writers’ and Players’ Player of the Season, while compiling his own personal goal of the season highlights reel. We looked on in envy but also with grudging affection. Better to have loved and lost…

But the real gut punch was Sir Les. For two seasons he had been utterly imperious. Unplayable. Fast, physical, unbeatable in the air, and clinical. So, of course, Kenny moved him on for £6 million. When Shearer was crocked at Goodison in pre-season on the same day that Les completed his move, it felt like the footballing gods had given their verdict. Desperate attempts to halt the deal were rebuffed.

But the outgoings are only half the story, as Dalglish followed a bizarre incoming transfer strategy best summed up by the age profile of our eight signings: 18, 20, 21, 21, 29, 33, 35, 35.

Not that it was all bad. A 21 year-old Shay Given arrived from Blackburn, a steal at £1.5 million. Oh and we acquired an entertainingly mental Georgian on a free transfer who had a thing about advertising hoardings. And… er… that's it.

The only other two fees we paid out brought in two of the least successful signings of our Premier League era. They weren’t bad players per se, but their failures at St James’ point to appalling flaws in due diligence, man management, and dressing-room culture.

Jon Dahl Tomasson arrived aged 20 for £2.2 million from the Dutch League with a canny record of a goal every other game. It would take the best part of two decades and most of the De Jong family before we learnt our error in that particular recruitment approach. But his post-Newcastle career - a UEFA Cup with Feyernord, Champions League winner with Milan, and record Denmark international goalscorer - show the talent Dalglish squandered.

As a second striker playing off Shearer, he could have been a player and an excellent replacement for Beardsley. But thrown up front to shoulder the burden in the absence of the main man, he was lost. An early sitter missed at home against Sheff Wed on his debut and that was that. He would play only 23 league matches and score three times. Happily, he saved one of those for the winner at Palace in late November in the presence of yours truly, the last time we would win in London in the 20th century. Typically it trundled apologetically over the line, head bowed and asking for forgiveness as it went.

As for Pistone, he's the only player more famous for his Secret Santa present than his performances on the pitch. Arriving from Inter for more than £4 million (or two Ginolas), he was a “highly rated” U21 international (aren't they always?). There might well have been a player in there, but we would never see it. Playing centre back probably didn't help, nor did having to acclimatise as a 21 year old in an old school English dressing-room with a penchant for xenophobic offal-based tomfoolery.

Another one to chalk up to Dalglish, and £6 million spent on two players who combined for barely 60 League games.

But we haven't even got to the good bit. I can remember the growing disbelief and embarrassment as if it were yesterday, as news broke through July and August of successive signings who could kindly be termed “veterans” and probably more accurately “cadavers”.

First came Stuart Pearce, a spritely 35 and fresh from relegation as caretaker manager with Forest. Then John Barnes, a relative spring chicken at 33, 10 years after he'd first signed for Dalglish and looking as if he’d just won the Formby pie eating competition for the fifth year in a row. And finally the coup de grâce. Disinterred from his resting place in West Yorkshire, along came Ian Rush up the A1 on his mobility scooter. No really. Two months off his 36th birthday and off the back of three goals in 36 matches for Leeds, this was our cunning plan to replace Shearer, just 17 years since he'd made his debut for Liverpool alongside peak era Dalglish the player.

It's a sign of how terrible we were that season that all three actually played a role. And take it from me, we were total dog shit - from 2nd to the threat of a relegation scrap in less than a year. Pearce had clearly looked after himself and at least brought leadership and professionalism. Remarkably, Barnes finished as leading scorer with six goals (SIX!), and Rush memorably slid in on his arse through a monsoon at Goodison to score the last-minute winner from two inches that set us on the road to Wembley. Mind you, he literally did nothing else.

But God it was dire attritional stuff, the plan clearly being to keep clean sheets and somehow nick a winner. Watching us was, appropriately enough, like having the life sucked out of you until you were a shrivelled corpse. We managed a grand total of 35 goals in the league and won only four times in six months after that victory at Palace.

Not content with his summer work, Dalglish got rid of Asprilla in January and somehow spent £3.6 million on a Swedish alice band named Andreas Andersson. Now he really was utter shite, although amazingly I did once see him put us 2-0 up at Anfield (we lost 4-2 obviously). Then again, Kenny’s other signings up front consisted of his son Paul and, the following summer, the comically inept but intriguingly apostrophed Stéphane Guivarc’h.

So think on. Turns out there are worse things than signing no-one at all.

Matthew Philpotts

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Image: Danny Molyneux via Wikicommons, CC BY 2.0

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